His First
Penitent by James Oliver Curwood

In a white wilderness of moaning storm, in a wilderness of miles and
miles of black pine-trees, the Transcontinental Flier lay buried in the
snow. In the first darkness of the wild December night, engine and
tender had rushed on ahead to division headquarters, to let the line
know that the flier had given up the fight, and needed assistance. They
had been gone two hours, and whiter and whiter grew the brilliantly
lighted coaches in the drifts and winnows of the whistling storm. From
the black edges of the forest, prowling eyes might have looked upon
scores of human faces staring anxiously out into the blackness from the
windows of the coaches.

In those coaches it was growing steadily colder. Men were putting on
their overcoats, and women snuggled deeper in their furs. Over it all,
the tops of the black pine-trees moaned and whistled in sounds that
seemed filled both with menace and with savage laughter.

In the smoking-compartment of the Pullman sat five men, gathered in
a group. Of these, one was Forsythe, the timber agent; two were
traveling men; the fourth a passenger homeward bound from a holiday
visit; and the fifth was Father Charles. The priest's pale, serious
face lit up in surprise or laughter with the others, but his lips had
not broken into a story of their own. He was a little man, dressed in
somber black, and there was that about him which told his companions
that within his tight-drawn coat of shiny black there were hidden tales
which would have gone well with the savage beat of the storm against
the lighted windows and the moaning tumult of the pine-trees.

Suddenly Forsythe shivered at a fiercer blast than the others, and
said:

"Father, have you a text that would fit this night—and the
situation?"

Slowly Father Charles blew out a spiral of smoke from between his
lips, and then he drew himself erect and leaned a little forward, with
the cigar between his slender white fingers.

"I had a text for this night," he said, "but I have none now,
gentlemen. I was to have married a couple a hundred miles down the
line. The guests have assembled. They are ready, but I am not there.
The wedding will not be to-night, and so my text is gone. But there
comes another to my mind which fits this situation—and a thousand
others—'He who sits in the heavens shall look down and decide.'
To-night I was to have married these young people. Three hours ago I
never dreamed of doubting that I should be on hand at the appointed
hour. But I shall not marry them. Fate has enjoined a hand. The Supreme
Arbiter says 'No,' and what may not be the consequences'?"

"They will probably be married to-morrow," said one of the traveling
men. "There will be a few hours' delay—nothing more."

"Perhaps," replied Father Charles, as quietly as before.
"And—perhaps not. Who can say what this little incident may not
mean in the lives of that young man and that young woman—and, it
may be, in my own? Three or four hours lost in a storm—what may
they not mean to more than one human heart on this train? The Supreme
Arbiter plays His hand, if you wish to call it that, with reason and
intent. To someone, somewhere, the most insignificant occurrence may
mean life or death. And to-night—this—means something."

A sudden blast drove the night screeching over our heads, and the
whining of the pines was almost like human voices. Forsythe sucked a
cigar that had gone out.

"Long ago," said Father Charles, "I knew a young man and a young
woman who were to be married. The man went West to win a fortune. Thus
fate separated them, and in the lapse of a year such terrible
misfortune came to the girl's parents that she was forced into a
marriage with wealth—a barter of her white body for an old man's
gold. When the young man returned from the West he found his sweetheart
married, and hell upon earth was their lot. But hope lingers in your
hearts. He waited four years; and then, discouraged, he married another
woman. Gentlemen, three days after the wedding his old sweetheart's
husband died, and she was released from bondage. Was not that the hand
of the Supreme Arbiter? If he had waited but three days more, the old
happiness might have lived.

"But wait! One month after that day the young man was arrested,
taken to a Western State, tried for murder, and hanged. Do you see the
point? In three days more the girl who had sold herself into slavery
for the salvation of those she loved would have been released from her
bondage only to marry a murderer!"

There was silence, in which all five listened to that wild moaning
of the storm. There seemed to be something in it now—something
more than the inarticulate sound of wind and trees. Forsythe scratched
a match and relighted his cigar.

"I never thought of such things in just that light," he said.

"Listen to the wind," said the little priest. "Hear the pine-trees
shriek out there! It recalls to me a night of years and years
ago—a night like this, when the storm moaned and twisted about my
little cabin, and when the Supreme Arbiter sent me my first penitent.
Gentlemen, it is something which will bring you nearer to an
understanding of the voice and the hand of God. It is a sermon on the
mighty significance of little things, this story of my first penitent.
If you wish, I will tell it to you."

"Go on," said Forsythe.

The traveling men drew nearer.

"It was a night like this," repeated Father Charles, "and it was in
a great wilderness like this, only miles and miles away. I had been
sent to establish a mission; and in my cabin, that wild night, alone
and with the storm shrieking about me, I was busy at work sketching out
my plans. After a time I grew nervous. I did not smoke then, and so I
had nothing to comfort me but my thoughts; and, in spite of my efforts
to make them otherwise, they were cheerless enough. The forest grew to
my door. In the fiercer blasts I could hear the lashing of the
pine-trees over my head, and now and then an arm of one of the moaning
trees would reach down and sweep across my cabin roof with a sound that
made me shudder and fear. This wilderness fear is an oppressive and
terrible thing when you are alone at night, and the world is twisting
and tearing itself outside. I have heard the pine-trees shriek like
dying women, I have heard them wailing like lost children, I have heard
them sobbing and moaning like human souls writhing in agony—"

Father Charles paused, to peer through the window out into the black
night, where the pine-trees were sobbing and moaning now. When he
turned, Forsythe, the timber agent, whose life was a wilderness life,
nodded understandingly.

"And when they cry like that," went on Father Charles, "a living
voice would be lost among them as the splash of a pebble is lost in the
roaring sea. A hundred times that night I fancied that I heard human
voices; and a dozen times I went to my door, drew back the bolt, and
listened, "with the snow and the wind beating about my ears.

"As I sat shuddering before my fire, there came a thought to me of a
story which I had long ago read about the sea—a story of
impossible achievement and of impossible heroism. As vividly as if I
had read it only the day before, I recalled the description of a wild
and stormy night when the heroine placed a lighted lamp in the window
of her sea-bound cottage, to guide her lover home in safety. Gentlemen,
the reading of that book in my boyhood days was but a trivial thing. I
had read a thousand others, and of them all it was possibly the least
significant; but the Supreme Arbiter had not forgotten.

"The memory of that book brought me to my feet, and I placed a
lighted lamp close up against my cabin window. Fifteen minutes later I
heard a strange sound at the door, and when I opened it there fell in
upon the floor at my feet a young and beautiful woman. And after her,
dragging himself over the threshold on his hands and knees, there came
a man.

"I closed the door, after the man had crawled in and fallen face
downward upon the floor, and turned my attention first to the woman.
She was covered with snow. Her long, beautiful hair was loose and
disheveled, and had blown about her like a veil. Her big, dark eyes
looked at me pleadingly, and in them there was a terror such as I had
never beheld in human eyes before. I bent over her, intending to carry
her to my cot; but in another moment she had thrown herself upon the
prostrate form of the man, with her arms about his head, and there
burst from her lips the first sounds that she had uttered. They were
not much more intelligible than the wailing grief of the pine-trees out
in the night, but they told me plainly enough that the man on the floor
was dearer to her than life.

"I knelt beside him, and found that he was breathing in a quick,
panting sort of way, and that his wide-open eyes were looking at the
woman. Then I noticed for the first time that his face was cut and
bruised, and his lips were swollen. His coat was loose at the throat,
and I could see livid marks on his neck.

"'I'm all right,' he whispered, struggling for breath, and turning
his eyes to me. 'We should have died—in a few minutes
more—if it hadn't been for the light in your window!'

"The young woman bent down and kissed him, and then she allowed me
to help her to my cot. When I had attended to the young man, and he had
regained strength enough to stand upon his feet, she was asleep. The
man went to her, and dropped upon his knees beside the cot. Tenderly he
drew back the heavy masses of hair from about her face and shoulders.
For several minutes he remained with his face pressed close against
hers; then he rose, and faced me. The woman—his wife—knew
nothing of what passed between us during the next half-hour. During
that half-hour gentlemen, I received my first confession. The young man
was of my faith. He was my first penitent."

It was growing colder in the coach, and Father Charles stopped to
draw his thin black coat closer to him. Forsythe relighted his cigar
for the third time. The transient passenger gave a sudden start as a
gust of wind beat against the window like a threatening hand.

"A rough stool was my confessional, gentlemen," resumed Father
Charles. "He told me the story, kneeling at my feet—a story that
will live with me as long as I live, always reminding me that the
little things of life may be the greatest things, that by sending a
storm to hold up a coach the Supreme Arbiter may change the map of the
world. It is not a long story. It is not even an unusual story.

"He had come into the North about a year before, and had built for
himself and his wife a little home at a pleasant river spot ten miles
distant from my cabin. Their love was of the kind we do not often see,
and they were as happy as the birds that lived about them in the
wilderness. They had taken a timber claim. A few months more, and a new
life was to come into their little home; and the knowledge of this made
the girl an angel of beauty and joy. Their nearest neighbor was another
man, several miles distant. The two men became friends, and the other
came over to see them frequently. It was the old, old story. The
neighbor fell in love with the young settler's wife.

"As you shall see, this other man was a beast. On the day preceding
the night of the terrible storm, the woman's husband set out for the
settlement to bring back supplies. Hardly had he gone, when the beast
came to the cabin. He found himself alone with the woman.

"A mile from his cabin, the husband stopped to light his pipe. See,
gentlemen, how the Supreme Arbiter played His hand. The man attempted
to unscrew the stem, and the stem broke. In the wilderness you must
smoke. Smoke is your company. It is voice and companionship to you.
There were other pipes at the settlement, ten miles away; but there was
also another pipe at the cabin, one mile away. So the husband turned
back. He came up quietly to his door, thinking that he would surprise
his wife. He heard voices—a man's voice, a woman's cries. He
opened the door, and in the excitement of what was happening within
neither the man nor the woman saw nor heard him. They were struggling.
The woman was in the man's arms, her hair torn down, her small hands
beating him in the face, her breath coming in low, terrified cries.
Even as the husband stood there for the fraction of a second, taking in
the terrible scene, the other man caught the woman's face to him, and
kissed her. And then—it happened.

"It was a terrible fight; and when it was over the beast lay on the
floor, bleeding and dead. Gentlemen, the Supreme Arbiter BROKE A
PIPE-STEM, and sent the husband back in time!"

No one spoke as Father Charles drew his coat still closer about him.
Above the tumult of the storm another sound came to them—the
distant, piercing shriek of a whistle.

"The husband dug a grave through the snow and in the frozen earth,"
concluded Father Charles; "and late that afternoon they packed up a
bundle and set out together for the settlement. The storm overtook
them. They had dropped for the last time into the snow, about to die in
each other's arms, when I put my light in the window. That is all;
except that I knew them for several years afterward, and that the old
happiness returned to them—and more, for the child was born, a
miniature of its mother. Then they moved to another part of the
wilderness, and I to still another. So you see, gentlemen, what a
snow-bound train may mean, for if an old sea tale, a broken
pipe-stem—"

The door at the end of the smoking-room opened suddenly. Through it
there came a cold blast of the storm, a cloud of snow, and a man. He
was bundled in a great bearskin coat, and as he shook out its folds his
strong, ruddy face smiled cheerfully at those whom he had
interrupted.

Then, suddenly, there came a change in his face. The merriment went
from it. He stared at Father Charles. The priest was rising, his face
more tense and whiter still, his hands reaching out to the
stranger.

In another moment the stranger had leaped to him—not to shake
his hands, but to clasp the priest in his great arms, shaking him, and
crying out a strange joy, while for the first time that night the pale
face of Father Charles was lighted up with a red and joyous glow.

After several minutes the newcomer released Father Charles, and
turned to the others with a great hearty laugh.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you must pardon me for interrupting you like
this. You will understand when I tell you that Father Charles is an old
friend of mine, the dearest friend I have on earth, and that I haven't
seen him for years. I was his first penitent!"